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Not Paranoid

(6)

ephidryn

May 24, 2008 11:39

Read 457 times, Dig?

This is a continuation of the story available here: http://www.psychicblast.com/view.story.php?wid=538

I forgot about them both and went about my normal video games and hacking bullshit and made a late night of it. I fell asleep around 6am and woke up around 2pm. I went out to get some vegetarian food and to my surprise Barbara was standing a block from my hotel talking to some chinese guy who was washing down a sidewalk in front of a building next to a school. She said "Hi!" and introduced the guy as her cousin or brother or something. She said she had been waiting for me at the citadel hotel for hours and she asked why I didn't call her. I told her that I had just woken up and I never agreed to meet her and I even though I had said I would call her it was way to early to think about things like that on an empty stomach. We walked to the chinese food place which is 6 blocks away and she talked about the distance as being really far. She used her phone once on the way to the restaurant but I don't recall if she sent or received a message or received/made a phone call. I felt as though she was dictating the situation and making me spend time with her even though I didn't necessarily want to. I decided that I was doing the same thing that I would have done anyway and she was along for the ride. She kept asking me about how long I had been working for and what I did. She asked me my name another time. She did not eat any food while I stuffed my face. We left the restaurant and started walking and I realized that we were going somewhere and I wasn't deciding where that was. I decided that I would walk her to her hotel and excuse myself to go take a shower and stuff. She got an SMS message while we were walking to her hotel and I don't recall if she replied to it. She asked me about my previous girlfriends and we talked about Philippino politics.

We arrived at her hotel which was a cheap 20 ringgit hotel like mine. We walked upstairs and she invited me in. For some reason I didn't excuse myself. Maybe I was thinking that a few minutes wouldn't be so bad and it would be more polite. She had a pink suitcase and a few things on the dresser. There was some underwear drying on the big wooden stand up closet thingy. The room was nice and cool with AC and a fan on. She asked me if I wanted to take off my clothes, which I interpreted as her way of asking if I wanted to remove my shirt because I was hot. I declined and said that it was nice and cool in the room. At this point I started talking about how I should leave and go to take a shower and what not and she said not before I laid down in bed. I kinda smiled and burbled and said no in a round about way.

Just then there was a knock on the door and in walked a man which she introduced as her uncle. His English was considerably better and we had a conversation about life, family, and politics. The conversation moved to his line of work and his timeline for retiring happily with his wife. He is the manager of a casino. The casino makes a lot of money he says. Millions a day. He said that he was the over seer of everything that went on in the casino. He is the integrity. He also knew people that could rig the dealing machines to stack the deck. He had it worked out to hit a $600,000 pot of which he needed someone to win. A fresh face. A believable face. A westerner. He offered me 20% of the winnings. I would wire the entire sum from the casino to my bank account. Leave the casino with an escort from their team who would stay with me for the few days until the 80% was remitted to a different bank account at which point we would part ways and everyone would be happy and the casino wouldn't ever miss the small dent in their daily rake.

He started asking me how much I could raise as "backing" which is the flash cash that I would use to get into the high roller room. I told him that we could talk about that after I had committed to working with him. He mentioned something about having to get the rest as travelers cheques to make up the appropriate sum. I explained that I needed 24 hours to contemplate this heavy decision. I left the same way that I came out and in all likely hood spoke out loud to myself while walking home. I was in there.

It was not immediately clear to me but as soon as I realized which way the conversation went I had turned into a giant stress ball. My mind was reeling. My body was doing what stressed bodies do. I was dehydrated and I had taken a multi vitamin before leaving my hotel thinking I would be back to drink plenty of water to flush the excess. Now the dehydration was forming into a vitamin B overdose headache. I couldn't focus on anything. I was trying to figure out where they were trying to take me. Was it the cheques? All this was over a few thousand in fake travelers cheques? How would they get the cash off me if I did successfully cash them? Were they going to take me at the game for my initial backing investment? No the game is banked by the house. No player could benefit from me losing which would put them in the same place they are now.

Maybe it was a bait and switch. After I got the cash and went there then the entire gig would be canceled and they would ask for me to repay the cash then. "It didn't matter" I told myself. I wouldn't cash any cheques and I wouldn't post any initial investment. If they had done this before, which the man mentioned in a story about a face that wanted to repeat the gig at a different location but wanted a larger cut, then they would have the capitol to front me cash hours before the deal.

How much control does the man have? Could he have all of security paid off to collaborate on an elaborate ransom scheme in which the mark feels that they are legitimately in trouble with a foreign government and as such is much more motivated to get a large sum of cash wired for a "bribe" to get out of foreign jail time? Were they going to surround me with fake badges after the fact and take me to a small room and talk me up until I was so scared of SE Asian prison that I got on the phone to my dad and begged him to mortgage his house?

Everything I could think of came down to the initial investment and the cheques. Everything else seemed too outlandish.

Say it was legit. Say they were on the up'n'up and just wanted to get the business done so they could go about their business. Say everything in his power would go as this man said. What other powers are at force? The casino hates to lose money. They look at their numbers all day long. There's statistics and variations are accepted to a point. How many times had they done this before? What is the chance that the time I participate is the last time and I go down with everyone else? Looking at a lot of spare time to learn a new foreign language.

The man forgot my name during our conversation as well. A culmination of all six of my senses told me that these people have done this before whatever it is they're doing and I'm had a real hard time putting all of my reservations aside and at the same time I didn't want to miss the opportunity which I viewed as a life experience and a financial boost.

As far as the ethics of stealing from a casino I bag that with stealing from corporations and have no strong moral objections to it. Casinos are most often a lot more aware than corporations though...

"I never called." - g

Comments from other users:

"Wow." - Miss Understood

This story was written by ephidryn and has been brought you you by the letters M and V.

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